ODASIS marks 40 years of launching students into health professions
Elorm Avakame, a Rutgers alumnus, graduated Harvard Medical School and is now an attending physician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He credited Rutgers ODASIS with preparing him for his career. It was an unusual way to start a speech.
Elorm Avakame stood before a crowd of nearly 300 people at Rutgers University with images of two academic transcripts projected on a screen behind him.
“Let me tell you a story about two pre-medical students that I once knew,” said Avakame, a Rutgers alumnus speaking at the graduation ceremony for ODASIS, the university’s renowned academic support program for students pursuing healthcare fields.
The transcripts showed that one student was crushing it with many A grades while the other was struggling with Cs and Ds.
Yet both ended up in medical school, Avakame said. And he should know. The transcripts were his.
“They are both me,” Avakame told the stunned audience at Trayes Hall. “These are screenshots from my own undergraduate transcripts.”
He then revealed how ODASIS helped him make the change from a student who struggled to a student who got accepted at Harvard Medical School. He is now an attending physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
“ODASIS made that possible,” he said.
The ODASIS program, which stands for Office for Development and Academic Success in the Sciences, is marking 40 years of shaping Rutgers students who aspire to become doctors or other healthcare professionals, helping them prevail through the challenging and intimidating courses—such as organic chemistry and calculus—that they’ll need for their future calling.
Known for both its rigor and its close-knit community feel, ODASIS provides a structured path and a reassuring “tough love” ethos that begins in students’ first year and doesn’t let up until graduation. Through it all there are required study halls, mock exams, and summer research projects. And if those aren’t enough, ODASIS Director Kamal Khan is always ready to coach, cajole, persuade and push students over the finish line.
Khan, who has been leading ODASIS since its beginnings in the 1980s, is famed for exhorting “eat your books” to students.
ODASIS Director Kamal Khan is famed for exhorting "eat your books" to students.
“It means you have to study,” says Khan, a professor in the School of Arts and Sciences. “No matter where you came from, whether it’s a blue ribbon school or not, when you come into ODASIS, you have to do study halls. You have to do the work. You have to become part of the community of students studying together and eating their books.
“And as a result, we see real outcomes.”
Indeed, nearly 50 percent of ODASIS graduates since 1990 are physicians, with other graduates working in a range of fields such dentistry, biomedical sciences, podiatry, veterinary science, and physical therapy. All told, more than 1,000 alumni of ODASIS are working in health professions.
Rutgers President William F. Tate IV, noting how ODASIS expands opportunity for students, drew a connection to the Morrill Act of 1862 which revolutionized higher education in America through public land grant universities.
“Don’t take this for granted; programs like this come because you have great leadership (and) people supportive of policy,” Tate said at the graduation ceremony. “Never take it for granted.”
Paige Young, a senior who’s set to attend the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, said ODASIS helped her in myriad ways navigate a demanding academic journey at Rutgers.
“ODASIS provided me the guidebook or the structure on how to attend classes, where to sit, how to interact with the professor,” Young said. “Also, ODASIS would help me break down, understand, and retain the material I was learning in my classes.”
And, she said, it was ODASIS that encouraged her to check out a summer undergraduate research program at USC, which led to her applying to Keck for medical school.
“I originally didn’t want to participate in the program because it was so far from home,” Young said. “But with everybody encouraging me, I felt I had to do it.
“I ended up falling in love with it and didn’t want to leave.”
Young, who majored in biological sciences at the School of Arts and Sciences, said: “Without ODASIS. I probably would never have thought of the possibility of going to Los Angeles for medical school.”
Besides helping students develop focus and study habits, ODASIS also fosters in students a commitment to one another. Avakame, the alumni speaker, recalled a marathon study session for an organic chemistry final in which everyone brought a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, a loaf of bread and a gallon of water.
“We realized that our study sessions would get derailed when we break for lunch,” he said.
And while studying for his MCATS late into the night, Avakame recalled being unable to stay awake. A fellow ODASIS student reminded him that it’s easier to stay awake standing up.
“It was those peers and that kind of accountability that helped me rewrite my story,” he said.
The support also helped him shatter barriers.
Avakame noted that he is the first Black man to be named to the faculty of the division of Critical Care Medicine at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
“It's not about my own personal accolades,” he said. “It's about the patients that we serve.”
He recalled a conversation he had with a Black woman whose son was critically ill and needed an operation to survive, but which also carried risks. The mother decided to pursue the operation.
She told Avakame: ‘You look just like my brother; I take that as a sign, and it gives me hope.”
In concluding that story, Avakame said: “ODASIS made that possible.”
Rutgers President William F. Tate IV, (seated at center) spoke at the 2026 ODASIS graduation ceremony.